Ambea AB (publ)

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the AMBEA Interim Report Second Quarter 2026 Webcast and Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be the question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press star, one, one on your telephone keypad. You will hear an automatic message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw a question, please press star, one, and one again. Please be advised that this conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker today, Mark Jensen, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you so much and welcome to AMBEA's presentation of the second quarter 2026. I'm Mark Jensen, CEO, and with me today is Benno Eliasson, CFO. We'll start with a brief group overview and our growth drivers, and then Benno will take you through the financials and business areas before we wrap up with concluding remarks and the Q&A. Ambea is the leading care provider in the Nordics with operations across Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. We operate through strong local brands and business areas covering elderly care, social care and staffing and competent solutions. To clarify the breadth and scale of the group, we have redesigned this opening slide to provide a better context. On the left side of the slide, we see the care segments our business areas serve and the respective segment share of the Ambea Group net sales. To the right, we see the actual rolling 12 net sales per business area, the corresponding share of group net sales, and rolling 12 EBITDA margins. In the last 12 months, we reached over 16.9 billion SEC in net sales and delivered an adjusted EBITDA margin of 10.0% on group level. We continue to grow through both organic expansion and acquisitions in a resilient and risk-balanced business model with continuous strong growth potential. And from here, let's go straight to the highlights of the second quarter. Quarter 2 was characterized by solid organic growth, opening of new care places within social care and a new acquisition in Finland. Net sales increased by 7%, mainly driven by organic growth. At group level adjusted EBITDA amounted to 397 million SEK with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 9%. The improved result is driven by high occupancy and operational improvements. Adjusted EPS grew by 88% and amounted to 2.13 SEK in the quarter. The strong growth is primarily driven by higher earnings. At the end of the quarter, Abea announced a recommended public offer to the shareholders of Humana, and linked to that, we initiated a program to repurchase own shares. At the next slide, we will look at the development of our organic pipeline for new care places. Already during the first six months of 2026, we have signed agreements for new care places that exceed the entire year of 2025. This is based on society's high need for more qualitative care places as the demand is rapidly increasing, not least within elderly care. Elderly care is also the area where we have the most new places in pipeline. New nursing homes are always minimum 60 apartments of size. Within social care, a new care home is smaller, typically from 6 to 10 places. We will continue to expand the pipeline in line with the needs of society and where municipalities welcome private operators in the welfare mix. Over time, we foresee the need for our contribution will increase. Our pipeline ambition is to meet the 2025 full year numbers for Vårdokker also in 2026. We expect further increase in Altiden's elderly care pipeline in the second half of the year and remaining business areas will also contribute positively year to go. Approaching the Swedish elections in September, we trust that the new ruling coalitions will face the supply channels with new ideas and a focus on care receivers and their relatives. We will constructively engage in dialogues to provide sustainable and qualitative care solutions as we have always done. And turning the page, let's review the total organic pipeline. Organic growth is targeted to deliver approximately half of our growth target. The increase in signed rental contracts we saw on the previous slide positively impact the total pipeline, which is now above 2,200 new care places to open between 2026 and 2030. an increase of more than 60% compared to the same quarter last year, and clearly industry-leading. Fully ramped up and at 2026 prices, the expected total pipeline revenue will accumulate to approximately 2.7 billion Swedish kronor. A ramp-up normally takes 12 to 24 months from opening date, depending on size and type of care home, as well as local demand. Looking 12 months ahead, we will open 480 new care places in the Nordics, which supports continued growth and improved economies of scale. With mid-single-digit organic growth coming from pipeline expansion, it is important to maintain and develop our position as an employer of choice, while we will continue to invest in our workplaces, work environment, career opportunities, competence and leadership development. We will now have a look at acquired growth. Acquisitions are an important complement to organic growth, building to the overall 8-10% growth target, and we have maintained a high level of M&A activity in the quarter. During the quarter, Valida expanded and closed the third acquisition within child welfare services, adding 40 million SEG in annual net sales. At the end of the quarter, we announced a recommended public offer to the shareholders in Humana, aiming to combine the companies. We continue to see an active pipeline across markets, and we remain selective, focusing on quality assets, strong operational fit, and value creation through integration. Let's have a closer look at total revenue growth on the next slide. We have now cycled the acquisition of Validia in Finland, and total revenue growth has slowed for that reason. Anyhow, the quarter showed good growth of 7.3%, driven primarily by a stable and industry-leading organic growth of 4.4%. This reflects the strength of our business model. We grow by improved occupancy, expanding capacity in our existing operations, signing rental contracts for new care units, and by successful integration acquisitions. Overall, this creates a balanced and sustainable growth profile. At the core of our model is quality and people, so let's turn to that. During the last quarter, we introduced a new group-wide quality management system in Vårdag and Nykida named MiraQ. By bringing our quality process and data into one common platform across business areas and geographies, we can identify improvement areas more quickly, share knowledge across the organization, and further strengthen our systematic quality management. And the rollout will continue in our remaining business areas during the remaining part of the year. In a highly labor-intensive business like ours, our employees are truly at the heart of everything we do. Our latest employee net promoter score, which measures how likely colleagues are to recommend MBA as an employer, remains consistently high. This reflects the positive culture we are building together and strengthens the foundation of our employer brand. Diversity and inclusion are an integral part of our culture and long-term people strategy. During the quarter, we participated in the European Diversity Month in May and continued our partnership with Stockholm Pride, reinforcing our commitment to creating an inclusive workplace where everyone is treated with respect and has equal opportunities. You can read more about our quality and sustainability work in the quality report. And now I would like to hand over the presentation to Benno for a financial summary.

Thank you, Mark. Net sales grew with almost 300 million or 7% in total, and all four countries contributed well. LinkedIn and Vardaga grew receptively 4% and 6% from higher occupancy and spending 11% was this quarter helped by a stronger Norwegian currency, but also higher occupancy within child welfare. Validia grew with 19%, primarily driven by the new business segment child welfare, where they have made three acquisitions in the last three quarters. and turning to the EBITDA development. This slide shows how the different business areas have contributed to the adjusted EBITDA of the group. We can see that also when it comes to EBITDA growth, all four countries have contributed. Nytida and Vardaga shows solid improvement in EBITDA as well as EBITDA-Madin, driven by good occupancy and high level of operational efficiency. extended improved to a more stable occupancy situation and improved operational efficiency, helped by a one-off this quarter of 8 million SEK. Altiren showed a continued EBITDA improvement for the 10th consecutive quarter and contributed with 12 million SEK in the EBITDA improvement. Adjusted EBITDA in total increased by 28% to 397 million SEK and adjusted EBITDA margin in the group was 9.0%. up from 7.6 last year. Volume 12 adjusted to the margin now reached 10% for the first time. Cash flow. Operating cash flow in the Q2 was very strong. This is both an effect of the strong profitability as well as a normal pattern after a softer quarter like we had in Q1 and demonstrated the strong underlying cash generation that Amea has. There are always some quality fluctuations in payments, but over time we are delivering a solid cash conversion of around 95% year after year. This slide shows the way from BBPA excluding IR416 down to the pre-cash low-cost tax. The rolling stock numbers are now at 929 million SEK, an increase as expected from last quarter by a bit more than 200 million SEK. Increasing EBITDA and more normalized network and capital are the driving factors behind the positive development. And our solid cash generation gives us both flexibility and strength to continue investing in quality and growth. And the next slide shows the utilization of the free cash flow. You can see how we have used and generated 929 million SEX, 212 million was distributed to our shareholders as dividend, 187 million was spent on the four acquisitions, and 521 million was spent on the two share buyback programs. And net debt has decreased by 87 million SEK. So even with this over 700 million delivered in different ways to our shareholders, we have reduced our leverage from 2.7 times ABPA last year to 2.4 times at the end of this quarter. This is well below our financial target of 3.25 times, and give us good flexibility for the future. And then to the earnings per share, the strong development in sales and profitability together with the share buybacks we have conducted have delivered a strong growth in earnings per share over the last year. In this quarter, the reported EPS grew from 1.13 sec to 2.13 sec or 88% compared to last year. The growth rate over the last year is very high. The compound annual growth rate the last two years are 25% in reported EPS, and if we adjust the EPS for IFR 16 and items related to acquisitions, the growth rate is at 23%. Then turning to the business area, we're starting with NITIDA, and NITIDA increased by 4% in NITIDA with both acquisitions and ramp-up units. EBITDA rose by 17% to 148 million SEK compared to the 127 last year thanks to continued good performance in previously completed acquisitions together with improved occupancy for ramp-up units and adjustments made in the service offering. We have continued to adapt our service offering in favor of services with more expected higher demand as well as successfully adjusted the capacity. It's the fourth consecutive quarter with higher margins compared to previous year, and the rolling 12 margin now increased to 13.2% from 12.0 one year ago. And then we turn to Endelicare and Balagang Sweden. Balagang continues to deliver solid growth, as net sales increased by 6%, but sales in old management continues to go at a higher pace, this quarter by 10%, reaching 1,027,000,000 SEK. by new openings and good occupancy in the new one as well as the existing nursing homes. The nursing homes we opened in Q4 last year and Q1 this year are showing better than expected occupancy development. Net saves in contract management decreased by 3% as we handed back two contracts that expired to the municipalities. We will exit contracts with an annual turnover of 199 million SEK gradually within the next 12 months. EBITDA increased by 24% to 143 million SEK. The profitability development in mature units continues to be strong as we are running the units with historically high occupancy and thereby improve operational efficiency. The negative effect on margins that normally comes from newly established units was lower than expected. In total, debit and margin increased by 1.4 percentage points to 9.9% in the quarter and to 10.0% loading 12. And then trying to stand in Norway, then we delivered a stronger quarter than last year. Net sales increased by 11% in SEC and 5% in local currency. Occupancy for care services for adults was still slightly lower than last year, but more stable than in the last quarters, while our services for children and youth had higher occupancy than last year in this quarter. The second quarter is the weakest EBITDA quarter from a seasonality point of view since there are most of the banking holidays in Norway in the quarter and this drives higher staffing costs. EBITDA amounted to 54 million SEK and the EBITDA margin was 5.9% which was 25 million or 2.4 percentage points better than Q2 last year. A more stable occupancy together with operational improvements following measures implemented to adjust operations improved the profitability. We were also helped by a positive one-off effect of 8 million SEK. We are strategically working towards units with higher capacity and better operational efficiency and are phasing out smaller units. We expect to see more effects of these various improvement measures in the second half of the year. We are now at the rolling 12 EBITDA margin of 7.4%, which is up from 6.8 last quarter, and we expect the margin to improve further. Then it turns to Finland and Validia. For the first time, we now have a quarter to compare with Finland. Validia showed continued solid performance, together with the completion of the third acquisition in the new segment of child welfare. The latest acquisition was closed the 1st of June, Net sales in the quarter amounted to 446 million SEK, which is a 20% increase from last year. Of this growth, 15 percentage points was from the new segment, Willing Child Welfare, and 5 percentage points was from the other segment. EBITDA reached 41 million SEK, an increase from 39 million last year, and margin in the quarter reached 9.2%, and we are now at 10.5% margin of the rolling 12 basis. The startup of the new business segment and the integration of acquired businesses have affected the margin negatively short-term. We expect the margin in the new segment to gradually increase as we improve occupancy and implement our system and processes. Over time, we expect the margin within child welfare to be in line with the average margin in the other segment in Finland. Validia was acquired as a growth platform in Finland, and we will continue to create growth through new establishments, both on acquisition and continued development of the existing operations. So now turn to Denmark. Alpiden in Denmark once again delivered an overall very strong product with continued strong revenue growth driven by higher occupancy across both elderly and social care. Net sales increased by 7% in local currency, In SEC, net sales were up 6%. Net sales in home management increased by 12% in local currency. Contract management decreased by 8% due to the termination of one social contract last year. The second quarter are from a seasonality point of view, the weakest for the same reasons as Spain and Norway, but the profitability improvement versus last year continues at a high pace. EBITDA this quarter increased to 13 million SEC, corresponding to a margin of 3.7%. which is up from 0.3% last year. The positive earnings development was driven by the higher occupancy in our management and by operational improvements. We now have 10 consecutive quarters with margin improvements in Denmark, and the rolling 12 margin has gone from negative 3.3% to positive 6.1% over this period. Our extensive work on the new project in Denmark resulted in signing rental agreements for another new nursing home with a total of 88 places scheduled to open for care receivers in 2030. We have now three rental agreements signed this year, which demonstrate the improved market condition in Denmark following the 2025 elderly care reform. Additional capacity expansion is expected within our management, where our focus and future growth potential is in Denmark. And finally, the CLALA. Clara saw lower net sales due to the weaker demand across several of the services. Net sales decreased by 11% in 93 million SEC. Historically, a strong supply of nurses in the labor market has led some customers to employ their own staff instead of purchasing external services from companies like Clara. For Clara, we now, however, see signs that the negative revenue trend is starting to change, and we expect better revenue development going forward as we now also are improving the mix towards services with higher demand. EBITDA amounts to 8 million SEK with a margin of 8.6% in the quarter and 10.5% on the rolling 12 basis. The good margin level reflects the well-managed cost adjustment and continued focus on profitability, even if in a softer market environment.